Azure IoT Edge

Build the intelligent edge

Azure IoT Edge is a fully managed service built on Azure IoT Hub. Deploy your cloud workloads – artificial intelligence, Azure and third-party services, or your own business logic – to run on Internet of Things (IoT) edge devices via standard containers. By moving certain workloads to the edge of the network, your devices spend less time communicating with the cloud, react more quickly to local changes and operate reliably even in extended offline periods.

Offload AI and analytics workloads to the edge

Deploy models built and trained in the cloud and run them on-premises. For example, if you deploy a predictive model to a factory camera to test for quality control and an issue is detected, IoT Edge triggers an alert and processes the data locally or sends it to the cloud for further analysis.

Respond in near-real time

Having the lowest latency possible between the data and the decision is critical. Rather than process your data in the cloud, IoT Edge processes it on the device itself, with the option of using hardware architecture from Microsoft called Project Brainwave. It uses a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to make real-time AI calculations, giving you the immediate insights you need to make critical business decisions.

Reduce IoT solution costs

Only a small fraction of IoT edge data acquired is meaningful post-analytics. Use services such as Azure Stream Analytics or cloud-trained machine learning models to process the data locally and send only what’s needed to the cloud for further analysis. This reduces the cost associated with sending all your data to the cloud while maintaining high data quality.

Operate offline or with intermittent connectivity

Operate your edge devices reliably and securely, even when they’re offline or they have intermittent connectivity to the cloud. Azure IoT Edge device management automatically syncs the latest state of your devices once they’ve reconnected to ensure seamless operability.

Frequently asked questions about Azure IoT Edge

IoT Edge has three components. IoT Edge modules are containers that run Azure services, third-party services or custom code. They are deployed to IoT Edge-enabled devices and execute locally on those devices. The IoT Edge runtime runs on each IoT Edge-enabled device and manages the modules deployed to each device. The cloud-based interface remotely monitors and manages IoT Edge-enabled devices.

Automatic Device Configuration Service for scaled deployment and configuration of edge devices

Support for SDKs in C, C#, Node, Python and Java

Tooling for module development, including coding, testing, debugging and deployment

CI/CD pipeline using Azure DevOps

IoT Edge is among the most open edge platforms available today, and Microsoft is committed to using open-source technologies to deliver innovations at the edge. The IoT Edge runtime is open-sourced under MIT licence to give you more control and flexibility of the code. We support the Moby container management system, which extends the concepts of containerisation, isolation and management from the cloud to devices at the edge. We also support Kubernetes to manage your IoT Edge deployments; manage devices from multiple IoT hubs using a single Kubernetes interface.

IoT Edge supports Azure, third-party and custom logic running at the edge. To take advantage of edge capabilities, browse edge modules on the Azure Marketplace. They’re container-based and certified to work with IoT Edge for faster time to market. If you’re a software partner, learn how to publish IoT Edge modules.

IoT Edge supports Windows and Linux operating systems, and runs on devices with as little as 128 MB of memory. See the Azure Certified for IoT device catalogue to find third-party hardware certified based on core functionalities such as AI support, device management and security. If you’re a hardware partner, learn how to certify your edge hardware.

Microsoft has partnerships with DJI, Qualcomm, SAP and NVIDIA for IoT Edge services. Develop IoT Edge solutions to run on your high-end GPU-powered commercial drones with DJI. Run IoT Edge and AI services on the Snapdragon camera platform using the Vision AI developers kit with Qualcomm. Deploy essential business functions as edge modules with SAP. Get real-time video analytics at the edge by converting video feeds into sensor telemetry with NVIDIA.